Have you Ridden Your Magic Mop Lately?

Habits are wonderful. Except when they aren’t.

The habits I like are the ones that keep me in line, moving down the road towards where I want to go.

Habits I don’t like are like ruts in that road.

Ruts can be challenging to get out of, especially when we do the exact opposite of what it takes to free ourselves.

In vehicles, we settle into the rut, deepening it. In the beginning, it’s easier that way. Our tires fit so neatly into the ruts we have made.

In life, we do the same thing. We repeat the habit so often, making the habit rut so deep, that sometimes it feels like we’ll never be free of it.

But we can. However, first, we have to notice the habit, then we have to be willing to do something about it. And what we do next makes getting out of the habit rut easier or harder.

What makes it worse?

These beliefs and habits are the same as gunning the engine of a car. They only deepen the rut and the problem.

So what to do?

And sometimes, when we get stuck, we need a tow.

Call the person who can help. Not the one who is in the rut with you. Not the one who hasn’t yet noticed the infinite landscape before them.

Because there is always a solution, but inside the rut, gunning the engine, it’s hard to see.

I was ready to write my next fiction book. An idea had bubbled up in a dream, and the following day words kept popping into my head that demanded I write them. I loved it. I knew it was the prologue to my next book, and I expectantly waited for more.

Nothing happened.

I don’t need much to get started on a book. All I need is the theme, a what-if question, a protagonist, an antagonist, a beginning, and an idea of what might be the middle and the end.

I waited. Nothing.

Because I was busy writing and teaching one class and getting ready for the next, I wasn’t too worried. I knew the ideas would be there.

But they weren’t.

I was stuck.

I tried ways to get to the story that always worked before, but this time they just made it worse.

I was spinning my wheels and gunning the engine.

Despite all that, I didn’t realize I was in a rut until one morning when I told Del that I was stuck and why.

He said, “You’re in a rut. You are trying to make this story (I had read him the prologue) fit into a time and place that you have already made in other books, and it doesn’t. Use a magic mop.”

I got it. Del was referring to something I had told him years before.

When I was eighteen, I saw a mop leaning against someone’s back door. A feeling of doom and claustrophobia came over me, and I promised myself not to be someone with a mop by the back door.

So I knew what he meant, and I saw the rut. He reminded me of the infinite landscape.

As I let go of where I thought the story would fit, ideas poured in, ideas that had been waiting for me to open the door to a different story and a new world.

Perhaps the book I am writing now is not the book or the story people are expecting. Maybe it won’t be the one everyone will enjoy, but it is the story waiting for me to write.

I stopped gunning the engine. I stopped digging into how I thought it would be. I got out of the car and asked for help.

There is no boring mop at my back door. Only a magic one I can ride anywhere my imagination can take me.

Perhaps ride with me? Bring your magic mop.

Imagine what we’ll see as we ride out of ruts and explore the infinite landscape of possibilities together.